


Breaking Points

by OonionChiver



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Affairs, Angst, But I promised people I wouldn't wipe it off the face of the earth so here we are, But I tried to write it in a tasteful way, But also they were immature and arrogant and good at lying, Cheating, Epic length Roseward fic, F/M, Having an affair over the centuries, How The Cullens All Met But Like Edward and Rosalie were hardcore in love, Hurt/Comfort, I have no expectations of this being read, It's kinda dark here and there, Misunderstandings, Moving From FF.net, Obsession, Playing in the shadows of canon, Rosalie and Edward romance, Rosalie is my girl, Slightly deeper and therefore darker versions of the characters especially the main two, They did not like each other, Violence, deals with Rosalie's death and the fallout, oh but wait they really really did, oh the emotions, spans the entire series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-19 00:02:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29617521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OonionChiver/pseuds/OonionChiver
Summary: ‘We make love in the water for the first time.’Edward hadn’t spoken for so long that I’d almost forgotten I was supposed to be silent and stoic, clocking in my fair share of keeping him company during his crisis without Bella.‘What?’He stared straight ahead, back against the attic wall as it had been for days now.‘Year and place?’ he asked flatly.I realised he was playing the little game that Carlisle and I played sometimes, tracking events in all the years and places gone by, but then the implication of his question set in as well. They were the first words he’d spoken in days, ever since we'd left Forks.‘I don't remember,' I shrugged off, looking down, but I felt his gaze on me anyway.‘You’re a liar, Rosalie Hale.’I turned the page of my book, expression forcefully blank. ‘Well, some things never change, I guess.’or...Did you ever wonder why Rosalie and Edward are so cold towards one another?(Uploading here by popular demand from its old home on ff.net where I will be deleting it.)
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, All pairings except for Roseward are minor and entirely canon, Carlisle Cullen/Esme Cullen, Edward Cullen/Bella Swan, Edward Cullen/Rosalie Hale, Emmett Cullen/Rosalie Hale
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	1. Change, Incremental or Otherwise

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first ever fanfic I wrote and it was YEARS AGO and I fully don't expect anyone to read this but a lot of people have asked me to post it here from FF.Net (where it's being deleted) and I did always mean to do a clean-up (because I wrote this in 2008 and had not yet learned the fine art of how NOT to write like shit) so, this is the more polished version of what I posted as a Twilight angst baby who was obsessed with Rosalie Hale. 
> 
> For anyone who came from the original upload all those years ago, heads up I will be adding more explicit sex, more swearing, more angst, but cutting a few of the um, more flowery inner monologues. Warnings for past rape/non con in accordance with Rosalie's background and for yet more unhealthy relationship exploration and ultimate redemption. *whispers* this was where the obsessions started, you guys. 
> 
> Anyway, like I said, I have zero expectation for anyone to read this story in a pairing with 30 or so stories (I thought Cullrian was a rare-pair) but for anyone who does, be warned: unless you ship Edward/Rosalie and don't mind the angst on full, you probably won't like this. Will be orphaned once finished.  
> 💜💜💜

I had always considered myself to be something more than what I was when covered in blood, killer of men, no matter how evil. Sated by the tangible ecstasy of my kill, the dead body beneath me, the taste in my mouth and throat almost made me forget that I could be more than this. That I could be _better._

Murderers had a bitter taste about them, the metallic smack of a dirty coin running through their blood. I hated that I knew enough to _compare_.

I so wanted to be more than this. I, Edward Cullen, had to be more than a creature bound to his desires and hunger, did I not?

Yet, as I looked around the dark alleyway, silence deafening in the absence of my heartbeat, I knew I was no different than any other of my kind. Wasting the potential within, that I might indulge in base desires, yet again disappointing my beloved Father. 

I stepped away from the drained, cooling body of the murderer and wiped my mouth with utmost self-loathing. The hunger was staved, though it would return later, worse than before. Carlisle had taught me how to control myself, through abstinence and intelligent control. I knew _better,_ but sometimes… oh, just _sometimes_ , his expectations of me were a heavy burden to bear.

_Carlisle_.

The very name in my mind caused shame to echo around my strong bones. I toed the dead body to be sure, sometimes they weren’t entirely gone. Carlisle trusted me to have given up my human killing ways _years_ ago.

After my return from a dark and depressing set of years spent alone, ruthlessly killing whomever stumbled across me with murderous intent, I had re-joined him and by default, the society in which we tended to circulate. But Carlisle could not read minds. I was deceiving him and it… _shamed_ me to do so. I felt like a petulant child and really, I was. Carlisle’s patience was boundless and mine was youthful, easily distracted.

There was darkness inside me. It worried me, sometimes.

So, it was with resolve that I left the corpse behind me, swearing to myself it was a slip I would never repeat, and ran through the night some twenty miles to the estate where the three of us lived, expecting to find all exactly as I left it.

*

I ran to Rochester. Running was wonderfully _freeing_ and it filled me with a sense of hope, buoyed by the distance between myself and the body.

_Home_ was Carlisle and Esme, not Rochester. Rochester was but a small, thriving town filled with people I did not care for. A place to put in an appearance, to circulate and maintain an identity. Living alone at the top of a mountain was safer, but we were raised socially, Carlisle had explained. The _need_ to socialise was ingrained, it kept us _human_. The much smaller town some twenty miles over shared none of its distinction, although it had a greatly reduced crime rate. Carlisle might read of my transgressions in the papers tomorrow.

As I drew closer, I began to feel that something was wrong. Thoughts, when distanced, resonated like sensations in the lower back part of my mind. A sensate thing, I could make out the feel of thoughts that were shaped by guilt and worry, by panic, even. Those thoughts belonged to Carlisle, whose thoughts I could sense the furthest. Alarm lanced through me because Carlisle was so rarely _panicked_.

As I reached the grounds, the delicate scent of human blood hung light in the air. I had been gone for a _day._ What in the hell had happened?

Carlisle's thoughts took shape, slowly turned to the familiar inner voice in my mind, then images accompanied his voice, showing me clearly what he was seeing, but in a way that did not impair my own ability to see and operate. It had taken so _long_ to master my gift, and ordinarily, I would never look so _hard_ into the minds of those I loved, for the sake of privacy and in humans it was simply a total lack of interest. Carlisle’s thoughts circulated entirely around a name and a _girl._

_A girl whose screams were like knives in his heart, a girl who begged and pleaded for death, and Carlisle could not oblige because of the change he had set in motion._

I was frozen at the door. The expensive, isolated estate would not alert anyone of such screams and even so, I could only hear them because Carlisle and now Esme heard them, that plus my enhanced senses. This close, I could almost _feel_ Esme's concern for the girl. Carlisle was beside himself, they both were, but he was riddled with guilt.

_He missed me, wished I was there, worried for me because it had been a whole day, and where was I? Where was his son, his Edward? He hoped I would forgive him._

I strode through the door, through artfully decorated hallways, because Esme always made such effort to transform a bland house into somewhere that at least felt like home. Those halls led me to the base of the house, to the lowest parts. Safest place, of course.

And even though I _knew_ what had happened, I _knew_ it, I still tried to deny it.

Down through the bowels of the estate I went, absorbing the thoughts as they came to me; image, sound, sensation, smell and even taste, because I needed to know more, to know _everything_. By the time I opened the basement door, I knew far too much, but it was not sufficient to prepare me because I’d never _seen_ it before, this thing, this transformation.

Rosalie Hale writhed and shuddered in agony as she screamed, voice hoarse now, throat torn but her pain no less viscerally evident. Her thoughts were completely disjointed, unknowable to me then and I was grateful for it because I already _knew_ from Carlisle and Esme’s reflections, what had happened to her, that snobby, shallow girl whose family dressed her in the finest silks and satins.

As she rolled on the ground, weaker now, her dried blood marking the wooden floor, the man I considered my father knelt beside her, constantly talking. His voice was soothing, a deep well of reassurance, even though she likely could not hear it. There was no trace of the remorse I knew he felt, of the torment he suffered within, wondering if he had made the right decision. Esme stood back, arms about herself, expression twisted with empathic suffering.

‘Edward,’ Esme greeted me, gifting me a sad smile as she opened her arms, always quick to offer an embrace where my own parents, whose faces had now begun to fade in recollection, never had. ‘Oh my darling,’ she said, kissing my face and cupping my cheeks. ‘Oh thank heavens you're here!’

Carlisle was there the moment she stepped away. He hugged me tightly, I knew he so wanted my approval for what he had done. Our strange little family stood together, trying to speak over the fading screams of the once glittering, now bloodied and battered girl I knew to be Rosalie Hale.

‘I had to,’ Carlisle whispered, like it was a secret. ‘She was dying.’

Rosalie, from what little I cared to know of her, was a vain, stuck up little creature whose desires were tragically mundane and material. We had met precisely twice, both times she’d disposed to be of a prickly nature; shallow, undoubtedly, by the shape of her thoughts, but sharp too.

Of all the people I could imagine spending an eternity with, Rosalie Hale was emphatically not one of them.

‘Who did this to her?’ I asked, extending the absence of approval which Carlisle sorely sought.

Esme put a hand over her mouth, shaking her head.

Carlisle answered, his voice taut as he watched her cry. ‘Her fiancé, Royce King. His scent was all over her, his and _others_ , too.’

A swell of terrible pity threatened the pure simplicity of my resentment but I was so very good at being pitiless, or so I pretended. I let steel cool my resolve. Carlisle's good nature had led him too far this time. I listened to her beg for death in a feverish, rasping mantra and could not contain my frustration.

‘What were you thinking, Carlisle?’ I snapped mildly, closing my eyes. ‘ _Rosalie Hale_?’

Carlisle turned from me and dropped down to kneel beside her once more, taking her hand gently, _reverently_ in his. ‘I couldn't just let her die. It was too much - too horrible, too much waste.’

Trust Carlisle to see things that way. His innate goodness was so often an impediment, or so it seemed to me then as we stood in the bowels of that place we resided in, watching her movements abate, watching her succumb to the supernatural. ‘I know.’

He seemed not to hear me, lost in the horror of what had been done to her and what he had done; cyclical thoughts all tangled up with guilt, with how she’d looked when he found her on that cobblestone pavement, her blood running in the predestined grooves. I tried to shut them out.

‘It was too much waste. I couldn't leave her.’

Beside me, Esme was instantly reassuring. ‘Of course you couldn't.’

And in-keeping with the overall theme of that atrocious night, shame struck me then as I felt a sting of anger, born of _jealousy_. I denied it instantly; of course I wasn’t _jealous_. Why would I be? Displaced, threatened, not at all, no. But still, the way Carlisle kissed her hand, the colour of Esme’s thoughts then, that _word_ in her heart.

Daughter. _Daughter_.

Denial struck at the shame and I clung to it. Imagine a world where I, Edward Cullen, was _jealous_ of a simple creature like Rosalie bloody Hale.

‘Don't you think she's just a _little_ recognisable, though?’ I said, helplessly harsh. ’The Kings will have to put up a huge search - not that anyone will suspect the fiend.’

Her sobs were tapering off now, the inevitable end to what had been hours of torment drawing nigh.

Their thoughts compounded my dread. Carlisle’s determination not to permit death and waste at the hands of cruel, vicious men and Esme’s love, freely born for those who might need it. I clung desperately, selfishly, to the thought that Rosalie might not wish to remain.

‘What are we going to do with her?’

Carlisle sighed, her hand in his, limp and still now. ‘That's up to her, of course. She may want to go her own way.’

' _I hope she will stay,'_ Esme thought. _'We can take care of you, young Rosalie, help you to blossom and recover.’_

' _She will stay,'_ Carlisle thought and it was certain, solid. He did not believe she would go her own way, could not understand why anyone would _want_ to, not when love and wisdom was offered in abundance alongside patience and caring. Carlisle was the best man I knew and Esme the best woman, but still, they saw things in a way I did not.

I thought of Rosalie’s potential _anger_ , could not help but vaguely empathise with how I myself might feel upon being awakened from such brutal violation to discover that the mortal coil had fallen away. To realise that I had become a creature whispered about in dark corners and gleefully besmirched in _Penny Dreadfuls_.

Their sympathy and pity had moulded into an intense form of _caring_ , a sense of responsibility. For all the time they’d endured her screams, they’d begun to care a little more for her, for Rosalie Hale.

Carlisle, I suspected dully, would be forever bound to her. Guilt was a powerful thing in even the weakest and most diluted of humans, but Carlisle felt a responsibility for life, for the _potential_ of every soul born unto this earth, like no other. Here, he had scooped up yet another before it fell into the vast beyond of whatever our kind was denied.

Bitterly, I thought that I must not have screamed so loud during _my_ transformation. Esme already loved her and that was simply unfathomable to me. This _swift_ love with no accounting for failure of personality, of _self._

Rosalie went entirely still. One gentle breath pushed out from her body, the last mortal exhale.

‘There now,’ Carlisle said, his voice shaking with relief as he stroked back her bloodied, mottled hair. ‘It's over.’

*


	2. Immovable, Unstoppable; It’s All The Same

When it finally stopped, I prayed to God to let me be dead now. Death was a swift and merciful end to my suffering, both occasions. It hurt, deep inside, that I had to die _twice_. Once on the dirty streets and again in a filthy, dark basement with people whose kindness had barely touched me through the agony of the secondary passing.

There seemed to be a cold cruelty in dying twice, _both_ times with insufferable indignity. Though in terms of pain, the second had entirely eclipsed the first. Annihilation, transcendence of the soul - even Hell, all were preferable to that which had wracked my body, sent my mind into insanity with the longing to rip my own skin and bones apart. Carlisle Cullen had _bitten_ me and that bite had caused untold pain, the kind that _changed_ a person.

Was I still a person? Rosalie Lilian Hale, still?

As the pain receded, an abundance of _sensation_ came for me. Sight, sound, scent, taste, touch, all too much. It was every single aspect of my surroundings screaming for attention and I had never felt any such onslaught.

Carlisle Cullen was smiling at me; sadness in all his corners, as if I was a miracle, come at great cost. There was blood between my thighs still, dried and pinching the skin, but he looked at me as if I was holy. Esme Cullen had the same sort of look and I remembered then, of what little I knew them from society, that they were the kind of people who _smiled_ altogether too much. Whose kindness was mocked and mimicked, all but their _son._

It was all too much, _far_ too much when my keen gaze landed on him, Edward Cullen, and a low sound born of deeply anguished anger slipped past my lips.

I did not _like_ Edward Cullen and of all the people I might have wanted near me then, filthy, twice _dead_ , defiled and blood smeared, he was one of the very last.

It occurred to me then, that perhaps that splintering, unbearable pain was the prelude to something much worse. Eternity with Edward Cullen. That was what Carlisle had promised, after all. Hours of his presence, what felt like _weeks_ spent writhing and screaming and pleading and throughout it all, he’d only promised me that it would be fine, that I would not be wasted or lost, that I would live forever.

‘How are you feeling, Rosalie?’ Carlisle asked.

How was I _feeling_? I was shaking from head to toe, covered in grime and _saliva_ and bite marks from too many _men_ , bloodied and injured and all my autonomy, what little I’d clawed and clung to all my life, had been snatched away. Violated, killed, killed again and born anew. I knew it to be truth, I _knew_ it.

How was I feeling, what a question.

But he’d stayed with me, so had the woman, Esme. They’d been there while my body turned traitor and my bones splintered apart, while my blood boiled and my mind threatened to break clean. They had been there, Esme had even hummed a lullaby to me, at one point. My own mother had never done that.

And I knew I was not in hell, at the very least, because whatever else they were, the Cullen’s did not belong there. The married pair were good people, however dull that made them and they would not be in hell which meant that _voice_ in the back of my mind spoke true.

‘Am I dead?’

Carlisle was still holding my hand, I realised. Still touching me. I hadn’t noticed until he inclined his head, clearly considering his answer but it was Edward who spoke, gruff and low and patently irritable.

‘You’re not dead, no, but not alive either.’

I could not help but scowl slightly at the answer because even in dire circumstances, he could not be _clear_.

Surprisingly, he smirked at me then, like he’d read the thought and found it amusing. It was one of my chief reasons for disliking him so thoroughly. He had always been so smug, so _knowing._

Carlisle spoke then, soft and soothing, stark contrast to _his_ voice. ‘There is much you have yet to learn of your new life Rosalie, but we will help you. We only want to help you, whatever that entails.’

Edward frowned at Carlisle then, vague hint of disapproval that spoke to me of something like _jealousy_. I wanted to pursue it, petty and reckless, I wanted his discomfort as if it would soothe my very own, but it would have to wait because some new agony was forming in the lowest part of my throat, my pain-weary body drawing tight in dread anticipation of what _new_ hell this was.

It was _thirst,_ I realised with dull shock.

‘She needs to feed,’ Edward said, turning away with an abrupt dismissal that made me want to _hurt_ him. ‘Now.’

*

Two weeks of anything, my father had always said, becomes routine. Two weeks, no more. He’d told my brothers that, not me, but I had listened anyway.

Two months of existing with the Cullens had redefined so much of what I knew, of what I considered life to be, but routine emerged all the same. Gone were the nights filled with sleep and dreams, gone were mornings to wash and bathe, to brush my hair and select an outfit, dressed and pampered. There were no servants, no assistance beyond Esme’s unfaltering kindness and no sleep to be had.

_Our kind_ , so Carlisle informed me, did not sleep. I had not believed him at first, determined to lay and close my eyes, to succumb to rest because I had always _liked_ sleeping, enjoyed the reprieve of rest but it was lost to me now. Closing my eyes did precious little to shut out the world, let alone my mind.

Two months of learning to slake a thirst more closely akin to hunger, a need that could turn me wild if I indulged in denying myself. Two months of explanations, of history, of coming to know these people and realise how small my life had truly been in Rochester.

I grieved in the quiet moments. It was a strange and constant thing, sharp, unacceptable loss of a life that I’d been promised.

_Smile bright enough and one day, you’ll have everything you ever wanted. Don’t eat so much, and soon you’ll have the husband of your dreams._

I grieved the loss of my family, mostly my brothers. They had been sweet little things, not yet hardened by our parents. I grieved that they would not have me to slip secret sweets to, to make them laugh, to tickle them and tell stories of violent pirates and terrifying dragons with trick questions. I grieved the loss of a world in which I had been so _secure_.

This world was dark and bloody, painfully civilised and _boring_. It was boring, that was perhaps the worst of it, at least at first.

Two months of living in the same place I’d transformed in, of being accompanied everywhere, of being supervised. The only time I was permitted to be alone was in that God forsaken basement. Edward was out all the time, Carlisle too. Most days it was just me and Esme, alone together. No matter how much I hated the boredom, I could not hate her.

Esme Cullen was beyond kind and sweet, she was _empathic_. She cared. She asked the kind of questions about me that no one had ever bothered to. And she was honest, shockingly forthright when she carefully enquired if that had been my first time, on the _ground_ , beneath a man who had proposed marriage to me in the safety of daylight.

‘Of course it was,’ I snapped at her, helplessly caught off-guard by the impropriety of it. ‘We were engaged to be wed, of course I had not—’

‘Do not upset yourself, darling,’ she soothed instantly. ‘Women are taught, by nature, that purity is desirable and anyone less than pure is damaged, but it is not true.’

My jaw worked, sat on that same dirty floor, absent of rats or pests. ‘I was intended for him and no other.’

‘I am so sorry that your first experience was so foul,’ she said quietly, some portion of _my_ pain etched into her delicate, lovely brow. ‘I would have wished much differently for you.’

‘Like what, your _son_?’

She said nothing but she did not need to. I knew what it was they spoke of, she and Carlisle. How they were concerned that Edward and I were not _getting along._

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, merely that you had been allowed to live your life the way _you_ wanted to.’

I stared ahead, thinking of too many things.

‘That was never in the stars, was it?’

‘For most women, no. But you are not most women, Rosalie. You have a second chance and that opportunity cannot be dictated by anyone.’

‘I was killed by a man, _twice_.’

‘And no man will ever hurt you or kill you again.’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘I suppose so.’

Two months in that place before Carlisle deemed I was ready to leave. Leaving meant leaving Rochester and I had thought it would be some great, terrible thing, but it was easy. I was all too ready to see the night skies anew, to be elsewhere.

‘You’ve done so well,’ he told me in the carriage, Esme and Edward riding ahead with the bulk of the luggage. I detested the _charade_ of being human, even if I was huddled into the carriage out of sight. ‘It took Edward years to master his hunger.’

That made me smile, helplessly smug. I watched the dark world of my home town roll past, fade away in the distance. I was glad to be going, but there would be a reason to return, I knew. Unfinished business, still.

*

The mansion was far grander than my family estate and I realised that the Cullens had access to far greater wealth than they ever advertised. They kept themselves small; a well to do family, but not grandiose, certainly not _rich,_ except they were. Money was no object to them.

The mansion had a large, well appointed room that was bestowed upon me and in that room, was a mirror. I had half expected not to see myself there, whispered legends of our kind giving strength to a ridiculous belief that vampires cast no reflection.

The opposite was true and what I saw in the glass took my breath away. All my life, I had wanted to be the most beautiful girl in the world and there she was. Gold, loose curls, perfect in every way with dark golden eyes and blood red lips. Pale, astonished girl who’d been held down and _raped_ , so Esme explained the word to me. Violated, taken, broken and _raped_ , she was so very beautiful, that girl.

I blinked hard and looked away, breath coming short then. Grief still plagued me, but it was far less clear now what I was grieving. There was anger inside me, too. Jagged and sharp enough to cut myself on, resentment and _hatred._

It was still boring. I could roam the grounds, the vast woodlands in the distance but not beyond. I was not _quite_ fit for polite company and social gatherings, but soon I would be, Carlisle promised. I trusted him. I _liked_ him.

I wandered the grounds by a lake; shallow, clear waters washing against the large, rounded pebbles. There was some sort of _anniversary_ for Carlisle and Esme today. I sought to give them their privacy even as they objected, asked me to join them for their evening when I caught them dancing and laughing; intimate, lovely thing I would never have.

So I walked alone outside in the darkness that hid nothing from me, beneath a benevolent moon, and I let my mind wander freely.

The natural destination of which tended to be Edward.

Around him, I guarded my reflections, had done ever since the first time I thought something especially unpleasant about him and he’d laughed openly. Carlisle had scolded him gently – about as _harsh_ as Carlisle ever was – and then they had explained to me that some of our kind had enhanced abilities.

It only made me hate him all the more, even if it did explain much of his arrogant omniscience.

Alone, I could permit myself to think of him, to exhaust my suppressed subconscious and indulge.

Of all the things about Edward Cullen I detested, and there were many to be assured, it was his complete indifference to me that I loathed the most. He treated me with, at best, casual disinterest, and at worst _knowing_ disgust. To have someone read my mind, my very soul and look away with a dismissive sneer, that truly hurt.

He was cold, rude and abrasive and I was… _alone_ and hurting and grieving.

And to make it all worse, so, so much worse, there was a part of me that _wished_ he would look upon me with interest.

Like Carlisle and Esme, he was beautiful. He had a way about him that was so different from other men and it had intrigued me, right from the start, but he’d shown himself to be flat and dull, refusing to engage and so my interest had swung wide, transformed, but it was still there.

It was important, so I told myself, to remember why I hated him. To guard myself and my innermost thoughts because if a man could look upon me in suffering and sneer, how would he look upon me while thinking such things?

I closed my eyes, trying hard not to let in the thoughts of his beauty, his eyes, his voice; of his manner and his _mouth,_ but each seemed fuelled with oceanic determination.

And with those thoughts, like the waves upon the shore, came worse thoughts. Came the basis of much of my grief and melancholy.

Memories that took hold, gripped deep and _flooded_ me.

Royce King.

The first time I realised how strong I was, the decision was made. Royce King and his _friends_ would die in the most horrific manner I could devise, and it would be done by my own hand.

Unfortunately, the first time I was struck with the idea, happened to be in close proximity to Edward. The Cullen’s had a tendency to spend much of their day sat around in the same room reading. I remembered him looking up from his book - a well-cared for, doubtlessly expensive edition of _The Inferno_ – and glaring at me with wide, judgemental eyes. I glared back, daring him to run to Carlisle like a child. He shook his head once, his judgement made, and returned to his book with moderate, yet obvious disgust.

After that, I realised I would have to be more careful with my thoughts. Always controlling myself until one of his many _away_ times. He ventured out alone fairly frequently. I wondered what he went away to do. Perhaps to see a woman, or many. Sheltered child I had been, but the proclivities of unworthy men had always been well known. It would only have shocked me because he seemed so _pious_ to me. Otherwise, I had no expectations of him. Perhaps he went out to kill humans, his inability to wrangle the hunger so lacking compared to my own.

By now, it was force of habit. My mind knew he was gone, knew I was free to plan and think whatever I liked, only I was too dejected just then to want it enough to commence scheming.

But then I thought of the cause for my dejection, and something quietly monstrous inside me _screamed_ for retribution. It begged for messy, violent deaths. For the loud, sharp crack of broken bones, for blood and loss of control. I would meet it halfway - it could have the bones and violence, none of the blood. I would not taint myself, not the way Edward struggled with.

A very small smile curled around my lips, I wound a silky thread of hair through my fingers somewhat masochistically.

The phantom pain of _pulling_ was a conduit to a plethora of bad memories, memories that brought rotting, insidious shame and humiliation into what remained of my soul.

And I hated him anew then because he knew _everything_ I had suffered. He knew it all, and still he could not bring himself to once speak my name.

That upset me intensely. To hear him use Carlisle's name with reverence that bordered on adoration. To hear him speak Esme's name with unguarded fondness and love. And when, if ever, he addressed me, my given name was _always_ notably absent. It was always _'you'_ or _'she'_.

He did not pity me, he did not like me, he was not attracted to me and he was not interested in me… and yet, he was possibly the person in all the world who knew me best. Life, or lack thereof, was deeply unfair.

I walked the pebbly shore of that lake for a little longer, trying to push myself out of melancholy with the promise of violent retribution. I was imagining the mess under my fingernails after I would kill Royce and his friends, when I caught that familiar scent. I cursed my luck, cursed it violently in language that would have made my mother likely faint.

‘Gone for the week, he says,’ I sighed, plucking a small flower from a patch of growth beside a rock formation, scrambling to return my thoughts to their usual protective assembly. ‘You’re a liar, Edward Cullen.’

‘I was unaware that I needed your permission to return to my own home.’ His tone was as it had always been towards me. Cold, sarcastic, deadpan. 

_Indifferent_.

‘Carlisle and Esme are inside,’ I told him. ‘Leave them be.’

He was looking at me, I could feel it. I walked, casual and calm, each step denoting a leisurely stroll which he fell into step with, if only to contradict me.

‘I need to speak with them. What reason have you for denying me—’

‘It’s their anniversary,’ I said, throwing a cold glance at him. Edward was… strangely dishevelled, hair all mussed, blood about him that did not smell _right_ , or at least, normal. Normality to me was animals, was wild roaming deer. This blood was unusual. ‘Let them have some time alone.’

‘I am _aware_ of their anniversary,’ he said through ground teeth and I revelled in his small slip, in infuriating him. ‘I must—’

‘Did you kill a human?’

He stopped dead and I did the same, turning to face him fully. His lack of answer was resounding.

I chuckled very softly. ‘Control is difficult to master,’ I purred, patronising in the extreme. ‘I'm sure you tried _very_ hard.’

His glare overflowed with loathing. ‘You are a mere _child_ compared to the years I have seen of this life.’

‘Years spent feeding on human blood. Carlisle's over-inflated opinion of you is staggering. You are fortunate indeed that he cannot pore over the personal and private thoughts of others.’

‘I have no _desire_ to make it a secret. I go to him now to confess it.’

And as much as a part of me desired that, to see disappointment colour Carlisle’s adoring trust in the man he considered his son, I also felt irrationally protective of the love they both bestowed upon him. They would not want to know of their son's misdemeanours, it would hurt them to learn of his deception.

‘It is _better_ that they know,’ he said, clearly anticipating my next move before I had a chance to make it. ‘I will not lie to them any longer.’

‘Why throw away such a luxury? I should love to be able to lie and do so in the privacy of my own mind.’

He sneered. ‘You would love to do a great deal privately, I’ve no doubt.’

When he made toward the mansion, I stopped him. Touched him for the first time since I was remade. He flinched at the touch, eyes widening and I let go quickly. ‘Leave them be. Your selfishness can wait another day. What good can come of telling them now?’

‘I would not expect someone of your _temperament_ to understand.’

‘I understand that you no longer want to be alone in your dilemma, that you seek to drag them down. Have you no control, Edward? Can you not force yourself to abstain?’

He grit his teeth again, something flashing in his eyes before he about turned and walked away.

It was a minor victory. He was no longer headed for the mansion, at least, so why did it feel like I had lost? Abstract concepts, of course. There was no winning or losing, not anymore.

And yet, foolish and reckless, I followed him and it felt completely inevitable.

*


	3. Flawed Perhaps, But Glittering Still

She called out my name and it was enough to stop me in my tracks, even though it should _not_ have been. I was caught between the edge of the woods and the low dip of the lake, Rosalie Hale’s anger bringing me to a halt.

‘What is this really about, Edward?’

I listened when I should not have, her thoughts telling tales of an anger she could not reconcile. Rosalie believed herself to be in full possession of her thoughts, in control of them to an extent that she could hide, but she could not and I had not been man enough to point it out to her.

‘I believe your resentment stems from the fact that _this_ is not about you,’ I replied, to all the world supremely unconcerned. Her scent was palpable now. Everyone had a very distinct kind of taste, a smell in the air. To me, she smelled of dewy summer roses and freshly spun silk, the warning of ozone before a storm. The scent of her skin at the very base was entirely, uniquely _her_ and I hated that part of me longed to know it intimately; to feel her hair, to seek the source of her scent, to know what it would be to _taste_ her lips. It was distracting, _she_ was distracting.

‘I know you hate me,’ she said when I foolishly turned and her thoughts resonated in speech, in shape and sensate awareness. **_Oh yes, you hate me; so selfish, so cruel, I see it, feel it, cannot stand it_** _._ ’But this is tiresome. We cannot live like this, not in perpetuity.’

‘How do you propose we live, then?’

‘We could be civil.’ ** _Am I truly so unworthy of your basic civility? Am I truly so disgusting?_** ‘We could try.’

Restraint flexing, I said, ‘Save yourself the trouble, _Miss Hale._ I will not disturb Carlisle or Esme tonight. Return to your insular concerns. My apologies for disturbing your reflections.’

It riled her, stirred anger within just as I had intended. I could feel that anger coming off of her in waves, though her control was impressive.

‘I know what you think of me, Edward. I'm sure an eternity with me is as daunting as an eternity in _hell_ , but we should not make things more difficult merely for the sake of it.’

‘I listen to your self-involved thoughts every minute of my time in your presence and all I hear is you making your _own_ life more difficult for the sake of it!’

Rosalie arched a brow, smirking. ‘You listen to my thoughts every minute, do you?’

Unintended slip, anger had me on the backfoot.

‘Oh yes, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? Self-obsessed brat, I’m astonished you pulled yourself away from the mirror long enough to take a walk!’

And she was suddenly, infuriatingly unreachable.

‘Well,’ she shrugged, looking around. ‘It was a _very_ beautiful night.’

I almost wanted to laugh at that, to fall into what she so desperately offered; civility, perhaps even friendliness in time but it was a dangerous path to walk.

‘Leave me be,’ I said, looking away. ‘I’ve no interest in speaking more with you.’

Cold fury prickled through her. ‘I would not _force_ my company on you, fear not.’

Now it was she who turned and I, idiot that I was, could not let it go.

‘What do you know of hell, anyway? I hear you recite _Alighieri_ word for word, but you know _nothing_ of it!’ I yelled after her, unforgiveable to raise my voice in such a way, but unable to stop myself.

Her anger crystallised and with her back to me, she let loose an unflinchingly cruel _burst_ of memory. It was like a dam breaking; a sudden, vicious flood of _horror_. Of men come from the dark, come with smiles like wolves and the hunger of demons for her body, _laughing_ when she cried, dragging their tongue over her tears and forcing _inside_. Of stripping her, of tearing clothes and beating her into submission, of beating her to _death_ all the while taking primal, violent pleasure in the worst possible way.

And I was forced to partake of it all. Months of sleepless bloodlust and existentialism had done nothing to mar the clarity of her memories; they were sharp and clear with razor accuracy, something she would never, ever forget.

I closed my eyes, wishing for the millionth time that I could absolve myself of my _gift_.

‘Rosalie, stop!’

‘Why should I stop?’ she sneered, but she did so anyway, leaving me badly shaken, mind polluted with second hand terror and shame and _despair_. ‘You care nothing for me, why should it trouble you to know of my petty tribulations? You wish I had died on that street; cold, dead and defiled, but _away_ from you!’

‘Do not confuse your own desires with mine,’ I spat, losing all patience with this mercurial creature; the embodiment of beauty, personification of unstable anger. ‘You’re the one who wishes they had died!’

‘I _despise_ you,’ she snarled.

Even furious, she was shockingly alluring. Her anger, so genuine and raw, was not repellent to me, quite the opposite.

‘You despise that you cannot hide beneath your beauty, that your name cannot shield you from me. You despise me because I can see all the way through you and you cannot make your insides as beautiful as your outsides!’

I was going too far. Propriety dictated that I apologise and leave, common _decency_ dictated that much, but I didn't want to. It didn’t feel like a possibility.

**_Arrogant, egotistical, detestable, hate him so much, damned beautiful eyes… mouth… what would he taste like, what do his kisses taste of? How would it feel to… Oh God, stop!_ **

I froze then because she didn’t have the control she thought she did, that much was true, but Rosalie had never slipped up to that extent. It was truly astonishing, to feel the heat of it, the last part especially. To feel hatred so entwined with something dangerously close to desire.

And people thought all manner of insanity, they really did. The thoughts of an everyday person more closely resembled a circus and I had come to terms long ago not to judge, but her _slip_ had my entire body taut and rigid with attention, desperate to hear more.

There was hunger about her now, but not all of it was born of thirst. She was still glaring at me with fierce eyes, her new-born hands itching for blood and violence. She needed to feed. I suddenly felt the urge to be there when it happened.

‘Rosalie,’ I said, as calm as I could manage. It was jarring to actually feel the resonance of her spine tingling as I spoke her name. ‘You need to feed.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Her sneer intensified. ‘As always, _Edward_ ,’ she scathed. ‘To you I am an animal requiring maintenance. _Feed it, keep it quiet.’_

My restraint was cracking, her anger helplessly bleeding into me and it had never been like this before, _never_. The thoughts of others could not affect me in such a way, or at least they had not until Rosalie Hale. ‘Oh, shut up, you pretentious little _brat_!’

‘Your benevolent denial is _so_ reassuring,’ she purred, coldly sarcastic. I could never recall being spoken to like this in all my years of life. I had never met anyone who hated me this much and it was… _thrilling_. ‘My hunger is no concern of yours, I assure you. I will not become a liability to Carlisle and Esme because unlike you, Edward, I remain pure.’

I was so enraptured in the heated exchange, that I couldn't see the mistake I was about to make.

By _pure_ , she had meant in terms of committing murder. That she had flawless control over her bloodlust whereas mine had eluded me for decades. That was what she meant and I, knowing of her murderous intent towards the man who had hurt her, _scoffed_ , loud and entirely unbecoming.

I saw the precise moment she interpreted it the wrong way. She’d said she was pure and I’d laughed at her. I, with all my insight, made a fatal error.

The _look_ on her face.

She hit me so hard, I felt my teeth rattle. It was a great, cracking thing that reverberated through my skull, might have killed a human, _slap_ or no.

It actually hurt. It had been a long time since I felt pain and whether or not it was guilt weakening my defences, she hurt me and I knew she _deserved_ to. I felt struck to my core, ashamed of my flippancy.

Something twisted in my chest, where once a human heart had beat, and it felt a hundred times worse when her face screwed up and she looked away.

Rosalie wrapped her arms around herself, facing the water. Her mind was a stream of unbearable thoughts, every one of them pierced my heart because she _felt_ things so intensely.

It seemed natural, for the first time in my life, to want to comfort her and to offer that comfort with touch. I was wary, deeply so, at first, not least because unwanted touch might be the absolute worst thing to offer, but when I carefully laid the tips of my fingers on her shoulder, cascade of long golden curls that looked silver in the moonlight, she didn’t rent me apart.

‘I know you didn’t mean it like that,’ she whispered.

My throat bobbed and I moved closer. ‘I truly didn’t, I’m… so sorry, Rosalie. I really am.’

It was raw and genuine and without my cold guise of the omniscient, distant son, I was adrift, cast out to sea and slave to my true emotions.

I was already pulling her to turn when she spun around and we were much too close, _far_ too close when she threw her arms around me. I drew her into my embrace; decades of _distance_ crumbling away and perhaps I was more than a little touch starved because it felt _so good_ to have her in my arms.

Rosalie was tall, only an inch shorter than I was. I held her fast and strong, breathing in her scent and finding it at the base of her skin, like I’d imagined. It was _dangerous_ , that scent. I felt unmoored by it, something worryingly close to primal need setting my back teeth on edge as I tried to memorise every moment of this undeserved intimacy, of her precious proximity.

Her lips brushed my neck and it was only by swallowing hard that contained a small moan that fought to slip free. Accidental touch, _accidental._ She felt hot against me and we were pressed together indecently, so much so that it made me feel dizzy.

‘Edward,’ she mumbled against my jawline as she slowly drew back. ‘You have to forgive me.’

Her mind was singing a song in French, clever trick she employed when especially desperate to hide something. ‘For what?’

There was an exquisitely painful moment, hovering between two worlds, a moment before something was about to happen, but nothing _did_ happen. She cleared her throat, expression closing off and when she moved away, I quickly stepped back because my arousal was _blatant_.

‘For _what_?’ I asked again, heedless of the scenario, of how deeply she was affecting me. Something had been about to happen and I could not bear living without knowing it fully. ‘Rosalie—'

She looked away. ‘Don't,’ she whispered.

I respected the boundary she’d drawn, but it plagued me, not _knowing_. It was low to search her thoughts, truly, but I couldn’t control it except…

Except that she shut me down. Shut me _out_ completely.

I stood frozen with astonishment. She was the first person I had encountered who had ever done such a thing. Her mind was a wall, pure thick glass.

I frowned, confused and betrayed by my own feelings. I spoke softly, hoping her mind would relax and open up so I could see and know everything because I _needed_ to know if she felt that too, if we had been about to kiss. ‘Rosalie, _please_.’

‘Stay out, Edward,’ she warned.

So I did.

*


	4. In Aiding Retribution

It was ceaseless. It came in quiet moments and all I _had_ were quiet moments. Time alone in a room with no clocks, with only the world outside to mark the days and nights passing.

I had been _wronged_ and it went beyond anything I’d ever felt. Deep, primal violation that set me in a dark, dense kind of fury that knew no release. It made me feel reckless, like I would never be easy until I had made it _right_ and it could only be made right by committing grotesque wrongs.

Royce King had to die. He _deserved_ to die. Brutal, vicious end that sometimes gave me cause to smile to myself, picturing it. Royce, the _catalyst_ of all this insanity, this madness and confusion and betrayal of _self_.

The same Royce King who was in Rochester still, alive and well. Had he lost sleep about what he’d done to me? I knew he hadn’t. Though it was not something I could ever admit aloud, I had come to see the _real_ Royce while he was atop me. All traces of the kind, coolly pleasant man who’d suggested marriage long gone. A man whose joy was vibrant and vivid as he _took_ and _strangled_ and made me scream louder only to have his friends smother it with their hands.

 _CRACK_!

The pretty rings on my cold, hard fingers snapped at the base of the metal, unable to take the pressure. I had not realised my hands were too tightly clenched. The crack was deeply unsatisfying. It was not _bone_.

This desire for violence was _unknown_ to me. Violence had been abstract. A male concept; messy and boorish, thugs of a lower station. But now it held a dangerous appeal, a wonderfully dark lure that whispered to me in those quiet moments, those moments all alone.

My body was capable of grievous harm, of true destruction. I could rent him apart, I could rent _anyone_ apart if they were human.

As the sensation too complex to be called anger began to crescendo and spiral, I let myself envision how awful it could truly be. How _much_ I could hurt those men, how I could be the one to make them scream.

I burned to take my revenge, to make God turn away in _horror_. Ceaseless thoughts verging on obsession, it was inevitable.

In my room, I let my senses fall still, all but one, the strange kind of _ancillary_ sense that could often detect where one of my own kind was. Carlisle was somewhere downstairs, Esme with him and they were alone. Edward had not been around the house for weeks.

The situation between us was unpleasant at best. As anger became obsession, I regretted my emotional outburst by the lake, regretted showing him so much. He had not hurt me like Royce, but he was indifferent to me and that was almost worse.

Left alone, constantly reassuring ( _lying to)_ those who showed me kindness, I began to scheme.

*

It was surprisingly sad.

No seamstress was open past dark and I did not dare raise suspicions by venturing into the local town by day. Carlisle was perceptive and he was starting to realise that I was malcontent to simply live and let live.

So, I stole into an expensive store, causing as little damage as possible, by night. The dresses were cast in shadows, but they were still lovely. Silks and satins, purest white because brides were _pure_. Women were pure. I ran my hands over the taffeta and lace, over the sheer, divine feel of materials crafted for one perfect day, to make any woman a princess, had she the coin.

And perhaps it ought to have been a pleasurable process, selecting the outfit I would wear while committing justified _murder_ , but there was a human element to it that reminded me of how excited I’d truly been when human. Of how _stupid_ I had been.

It was not yet six months and still, it felt like decades. Dresses like this, they would never be made for me. Never be customised for me. Such rituals were lost, I realised. Marriage, love, children.

I swallowed over a painful lump.

A whole future, taken. Stolen. _Ruined._

I picked a dress off the rack, not custom, _never_ custom and a veil to match, ignoring how my fingertips trembled. I left money for the dress atop the cashier’s desk, uncertain if that would make it worse and draw additional attention, but I was somehow not yet ready to become a thief, even if my soul cried out to commit murder.

*

I bided my time, I waited until Carlisle and Esme had _societal_ obligations. A night of pretending to drink champagne and talking niceties, operating in the human realm that Carlisle could continue to help as many as possible. Edward’s presence was scant at best, he came and went as he pleased and I promised the parental two that I was set for a night of reading and playing the piano, so they left me with kisses and smiles.

In my room, I stripped down and stepped into the pool of satin and rustling taffeta, pulling it slowly up over my porcelain skin, watching in the full length mirror. I wore no underwear, there was something unrestrained and savage in it. It was _distracting_ and painfully sad because they had laughed at me, _laughed_ and I’d been weak and useless, crying and pleading for mercy, denied this dress in the worst way possible.

So distracting it was that I didn’t even notice he was standing right behind me, hovering in the doorway.

It was only _when_ I noticed him, that he spoke. His jaw was somewhat lax, eyes a little bit wide and I wondered how long he’d been standing there as I turned, unable to force myself into any state of indignant hysteria over what might be perceived as failed modesty.

‘What…’ he asked, voice cracking. ‘Are you doing?’

I tipped my chin, disregarded pretence. ‘You know what I’m doing.’

Edward looked away for a moment before his throat worked. I could see it all so clearly, even in the near dark, full moon outside making the silk gleam.

‘I’ve known for weeks now what you were planning and I’ve tried to give you space, but this…’

I ran my hands over the material. ‘This… _what_? This shatters the borders of acceptable attire for murder? Please do advise me what best to wear when tearing apart the men who took my life. I bow to your superior knowledge of such things.’

Oh, his eyes _flashed_ when he looked back. ‘I _meant_ what you’re wearing _under_ the dress,’ he said, teeth slightly clenched.

And it made something in my lower abdomen flip over, made me feel _tight_ when he said that, but I was in no mood for strange reactions, for _emotions_ so I looked away, focused on the mirror, arranged my hair. In the reflective glass, he faced away again, exhaled roughly.

‘Can you do my buttons please?’ I asked as he began to walk away.

Edward looked back, stopped. ‘I beg your pardon?’

I sighed. ‘Really? This is the level of formality I must endure? I go to murder men and fracture my soul, but my bare back is what will cast the greatest aspersions upon my character in your regard?’

‘Rosalie, I—’

‘I’m only asking for your help,’ I said, the words coming out more forcefully than I would have liked. ‘You can say _no.’_

He hesitated only a moment before he entered my room, stepped into my space and stood behind me. I watched his throat bob, saw the level of barely suppressed intensity playing about him as his fingers took hold of the material, began to button me into the dress.

‘All of them?’ he asked, a little hoarse.

‘Yes, all the way to the top,’ I said, watching him helplessly. It was strangely bewitching, this process. The dress, his unexpected company, his assistance, albeit _grudging_. I still felt the ache of anguish, of a life lost to cruelty and abhorrent greed, but something else began to form within, something _warm_.

‘It’s a beautiful dress,’ he said when he was almost done. He brushed my hair to one side, backs of his fingers sweeping across my neck as he did and I _shivered_ , couldn’t help it. His breath caught, hands still on me, his proximity to me in this way practically indecent by the standards of society but I didn’t _care_ about society, not anymore.

‘Thank you,’ I said when the silence stretched on too long. ‘It was… the closest to what I originally selected.’

He nodded, like he understood and I realised I’d _forgotten_ that he could read my mind, my every thought as it occurred to me. Panic curled around my heart and I began to move away when he said, ‘No, don’t. I… your thoughts when unguarded are soothing.’

Very slowly, I turned away from the mirror and faced him. ‘What did you say?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, stepping back, dropping his gaze. ‘That was untoward.’

So _formal_.

I found myself wishing to see _him_ unguarded in return, fair exchange for him invading my privacy while I prepared for murder, but that would mean venturing down an avenue I had forbidden.

‘What was soothing about my thoughts?’

His jaw worked, disposition nervous now. I fully expected a dismissal, for him to deny, retreat and vanish for weeks again, but he _stayed_ and he spoke true.

‘Your anticipation of vengeance. I find that soothing.’

And really, what was I supposed to say to that?

‘Rosalie,’ he said haltingly. ‘I would—that is if you asked me, I would kill them _for you_. You need not dirty yourself in this way. I’ve killed many before.’

Though more guarded that time, I could not prevent how it made me _feel_ when he said that.

He went on. ‘I would not disappoint you,’ he promised. ‘I would kill them just as you’ve imagined, as I’ve seen.’

‘I appreciate your offer,’ I spoke slowly, determined not to say anything foolish. ‘But I want this. I’ve thought of little else.’

‘Then let me help you,’ he blurted out. ‘Let me go with you. If only,’ he added quickly, on safer ground. ‘To ensure you are not seen.’

I searched myself for any reason to feel _offended_ by his offer, to scorn and to scathe, but found only a weirdly warm regard towards him, offering to help me kill.

‘Yes, I would like that,’ I said at length.

He seemed relieved, pleased even.

‘Good. It will be easier with two of us. To contain it, I mean. To control them.’

‘Herd them like cattle,’ I suggested, my attention on him raptly now. He was _excited_.

‘Yes, exactly. Though, you should avoid spilling blood,’ he told me. ‘Human blood, once tasted, is hard to replace with that of animals.’

‘Then I’ll do my best,’ I told him, reaching for the veil fitted into a tiara.

That time, he helped without being asked. Pulled gently on the material, drew it down my back.

‘Beautiful,’ he whispered.

I had to remind myself he was speaking of the dress.


	5. The Basics of Curiosity

There was danger in curiosity, I knew that better than most. Mistakes made in human youth had taught me harsh lessons. Wondering about bodies and reactions, always needing to know so much _more_ than the surface data people tended to offer, many a time I’d been met with a painful answer. A course corrected time and again, proved that to seek knowledge was _wrong_ , unless it was the good, wholesome sort.

Man and woman under God, under law of the bible and that law was for men to dictate, I knew that solidly.

‘ _Edward_ ,’ my father would say when I crept into his study and he caught me. _‘What happened to the curious cat?’_

His palm was quick to crack across my face but he always forgave me after. It did not quite _curb_ my interest, though. His study was a museum of knowledge, of dark and dangerous things and even as a small child, I had been drawn to better understand the darkness, the shadows cast by normality, stretching long against the wall of the forbidden.

There was _danger_ in wanting to better understand things of such a nature but somehow _knowing_ that did nothing to prevent it when I was with her.

*

The journey to Rochester was faster than I’d anticipated. _She_ was faster than I’d realised. We very rarely hunted together, only three times as a family unit and then I’d been busy trying very hard to ignore her, to maintain my increasingly childish anger that she was _intended_ for me, albeit vaguely.

She matched my speed, she _excelled_ , ran right past me, dress hitched high enough so as not to impede her. She laughed sometimes. _Teasing_.

The feeling, the _worrying_ damned feeling that best resembled _falling_ , it just kept building the more time I spent with her. She wasn’t what I thought, she was _more_ , best akin to a shimmering surface, glittery and bright, obscuring enormous, lightless depths.

I ran as fast as I could, but couldn’t keep up.

*

The dress was already ruined by the time we arrived, but that did seem to be the point. I followed her lead, wanting to cede as much control of this occasion to her as possible. The town was dark, quiet at such an hour and in the richer parts, the areas where only the affluent could afford to reside, that was where we crept.

We made our way quickly to the residence of one of his friends, not Royce himself. The estate not especially vast, especially compared to where we tended to live, but it was grand and gaudy enough. He would be the first.

‘Let me go in alone,’ she breathed, watching the windows, crouched beside me, the leaves and mud tarnishing the base of all her satin.

‘I should be with you,’ I said before I could prevent it, foolish slip that was happening increasingly with her. ‘For safety.’

Rosalie smiled beneath the silvery moon.

‘Trust me to be strong.’

I did. ‘I do.’

‘Then I’m going in alone,’ she said, moving forward. ‘But only at first. Join me when he screams.’

*

It was methodical and grotesque. She was a creature possessed, she was cruel and _vicious_ and she made them beg for death, she made them babble.

Beautiful. She was _beautiful_.

She wrought not a droplet of their blood, though I could not help myself and she didn’t mind. It was more, from what I gleaned of her thoughts, that she wanted no part of them _inside_ her. It was difficult, killing without spilling blood, but oh, she managed it. She twisted and _crushed_ and she cracked them from the inside.

They _screamed_ and they begged, they apologised, one by one, those men who’d raped her, who thought they could _touch_ her in such a way.

It sickened me, even while I watched them die.

She let one of them run, clutching his chest, bones all shattered and splintered, but she let him run.

‘Why?’ I asked when she stopped me from pursuing him.

‘He’ll run to Royce,’ she breathed, eyes almost entirely eclipsed by a red so dark it was black. ‘Let him, I want Royce to cower. To dread and hide.’

Her lust for violence resonated like adrenaline to me. It resonated like _desire_. I wanted to turn it my way, I wanted to _know_ it.

She looked at me, gaze dropping to my mouth and then she stepped back.

‘You’ve…’ she cleared her throat. ‘You’ve blood on your face.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s… it’s fine,’ she assured me but her thoughts, they were a _mess_. The things she wanted, they all involved human blood, but only as a precursor. She had just about obscured her strange reflections and predatory base desires but I caught it when she thought how much she would love to kiss all the blood right out of my mouth.

*

I stood back when she took hold of Royce, my role in dispatching the guards he’d hired to protect himself was done and all but one man stood between her and the crystalline realisation of her revenge. She tore the doors from his vault, she made it look _easy_.

He was cowering in the corner as she stepped inside.

His thoughts were pleasing to me, the thud-thump of his heart running a rhythm through his pleas to God, for mercy, for intervention.

‘Demon,’ he gasped, scrabbling backwards even though there was nowhere to go. ‘Demon _bitch_! Get away from me!’

‘Come now, my love,’ she crooned, soft with malice. ‘You’re not happy to see me? You were _so_ happy last time.’

‘I didn’t… it was for fun, the o-others, they got carried away!’

‘You told them to make me bleed.’

He started sobbing.

‘To see if I was still quite so _pretty_ when I cried, or don’t you remember?’

‘This can’t be fucking _happening_ , it—please God, please help me!’

‘There is no God,’ she told him, stepping closer. I let my eyes flutter shut, saw it through her mind. He was a snivelling mess, that man who’d _forced_ and laughed, had kissed her and bit her, brutalised her and then left her to die. ‘There is only your actions, Royce, and what you’ve brought upon yourself.’

She picked him up with one hand, pinned him to the wall by his throat but she exerted restraint, not cracking his neck. She punched him in the stomach. Then again, then in the ribs. She let him fall to the ground and kicked him.

Rosalie beat him to point of death and then, _then_ only when he begged to die, did she so generously oblige. Broke his neck in half and dropped him amid his stacks of messy money, his lifetime of hoarded wealth.

When she stepped out of the vault, I felt struck by the sight of her, the way her gaze latched onto mine so quickly, with such intensity.

It hit me hard, in the very epicentre of my solar plexus. I _wanted her._ I wanted her like nothing before. She was a dark creature whose flaws called out to mine, pleaded to join and unite and _give_. I wanted to give her everything, I realised and that, if nothing else, was truly shocking because I had long ago come to terms with how selfish I was at heart.

I wanted to give her myself, my body, to _give_ her happiness even though I suspected deep down, I did not have that to give.

There had never been anyone before. No woman, no girl, but curiosity had driven me to imagine. To shamefully take myself in hand at night, in bed, and let my mind wander. It happened still, even as the creature I was now. I still _wanted_ things, people, women.

It had happened the night I met her, even though I had despised her when we first met, instantly set on edge by her vanity and arrogance. Too similar to my own, but her femininity coloured it _strange_.

‘You did so well,’ I told her, praised her but it felt inadequate.

Her mind then was darkly mesmeric, a riptide of sweet water, force of the unnatural nature.

Complex contradictions; purity, desire, beauty, worthiness. She was all of them and none, she was everything and nothing, so she saw herself but in that moment, she was vindicated, at least for now.

‘Thank you for helping,’ she said, a little breathless. Not from exertions, of course, simply from the adrenaline. Old habits of a body used to harsh ragged breaths were the hardest to break.

She moved closer, the smell of death all around.

‘It felt good to kill him,’ she told me. ‘It felt _amazing_.’

‘Killing often does,’ I said, swallowing reflexively.

‘I expected it to feel wrong.’

‘We’re killers,’ I said bluntly. ‘It is not _wrong_ for us to kill, we are designed for it now.’

‘I see how it could become addictive.’ She stopped just shy of our toes touching, but this close I could see every aspect of her and I _wanted_ her. ‘Especially when goodness seems to go unrewarded.’

My lips parted in surprise. ‘Yes,’ I said, blinking. ‘That’s exactly what I always think.’

When she lifted her hand to push back my hair, my heart felt like it had been struck by lightning. Simple gesture, gentle even, but it was intimate and she studied me like she had intention to move forward, to kiss me.

‘So few pleasures to be had in this life.’

I bit down on a groan. ‘Yes.’

‘It seems wasteful to ignore what’s standing before us.’

‘Rosalie, please.’

‘Please what?’ she asked, barely above a whisper. ‘Tell me what you want, Edward?’

‘I want...’ _Oh God, don’t say it._ ‘I _want_ …’

It was happening again; the impossible moment lurching forward towards madness and insanity, shaded with dark desire and need. The feeling spread through my body like a blood stain from a stab wound, warm and numbing; yet setting me alight. Our eyes locked together, she was the still point of the turning world.

And when her fingers slid around the back of my neck, I shuddered at the feel of her skin on mine.

 ** _Take what you want,_** she thought in a manner that was so direct, so _forward_ it made me gasp.

And I almost did, until sounds from outside the estate caught my attention.

Yelling voices, _people_.

‘Come,’ I said, taking her by the hand. ‘We must away.’

She laughed as I pulled her along and once outside, once in the clear of the open land, she ran ahead of me once more.


End file.
